


Display of Affection

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 08:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16215749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: PDAs anyone?





	Display of Affection

It started as a joke. He swept her up into his arms, Hollywood-style, and kissed her once the elevator doors sighed shut. Her howl of protest was drowned under the insistence of his tongue. He put her back on the floor once the lift reached the car park. She straightened her skirt and rubbed her lipstick from his face. The clip of her heels across the concrete was lighter that day.

***

The second time, he bent her backwards over his knee so that her hair swept the elevator floor and he slid his hand down the V of her blouse rubbing her already erect nipples through the silk of her bra cup. The melody of Doris Day’s ‘Secret Love’ was vibrating in his throat. When he righted her, the blood rushed from her head and she wobbled against him. He covered a chuckle as Agent Fines squeezed his bulk into the lift and stared at them.  
“Now I sing it to the highest hills, even told the friendly daffodils,” he whispered and she jabbed his ribs.

The clip of her heels in the car park was positively springy. She knew it. Tried to calm it down a bit, but she found herself singing, ‘at last my heart’s an open door, and my secret love’s no secret anymore.’

***

The third time he was bold enough to kneel before her and bunch up her skirt, running his tongue over the scant fabric that separated her from the ultimate pleasure of his lips. His hair felt luxuriously thick in her fingers as she urged him on and away in the same guttural breath. Her ‘Mulder’ was more sigh than command. He knew it. He probed the wetness and his fingers found their target before they hit the AD’s floor. She heard his knees click as he leapt to his feet when the doors wheezed open. 

Skinner clasped his hands on the desk between them and she crossed her legs, trying not to squirm and she had to endure Mulder running his tongue over his lips for the entire meeting.

***

Her pregnancy outed their relationship to those few left in the Bureau who’d turned a deaf ear to water cooler gossip. In the dark moments of despair, when sleep evaded her tightly-tuned body, she hummed ‘Secret Love’ to herself. When he was returned, he didn’t remember the games he played. Or if he did, he couldn’t bear to revisit that softer version of himself. Their first trip in an elevator saw her standing quarter-turned towards him, expectant, fingers whispering against the side of his hand. But he just looked at his feet and waited for the ding of the floor bell. 

She rubbed her swollen belly as the baby kicked. “I know, bean,” she said quietly. “He’ll come back.”

***

On the run, they clung to each other out of need, in motel receptions, in gas stations, on highway roadsides . Her dyed hair and his beard, her dollar shop jeans and his backwards cap, her part time job as a dental receptionist, his obsession with an unremarkable house set far enough back from the road often felt like they were living someone else’s lives. Affection was a grounder. Touch was the necessary reminder of their old lives. You couldn’t kiss each other differently. It just wasn’t possible. Their kisses, wherever they were given, tasted of desperation, isolation, but never regret. 

“You’ll always be my truth,” he told her when they turned the key in the lock of that house. And he kissed the fear out of her when he carried her across the threshold. She felt like a Hollywood heroine, arms looped around her man’s neck. But his hands around her waist and under knees were just as clingy. It was days before they surfaced.

***

Time hasn’t dulled the boundaries of their passion but perhaps age has trimmed it to fit into a more standard package. They are back at the bureau. He’s less spooky, she’s less skeptical. Skinner is less concerned about their relationship, shaking his head when they’re face to face in the office or whispering in at the water cooler.

They have a son out there, a teenager waiting to be embarrassed by his parents’ public displays of affection but for now, she’s happy to ride the elevator with Mulder and hope the CCTV isn’t working.


End file.
